


House, Now Home

by jehanna



Series: Sole Survivor: Maria Ikamoto [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Family Feels, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28106295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehanna/pseuds/jehanna
Summary: Piper wakes up every morning to send them off to school without fail, and almost skips one morning. She's glad she didn't.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Piper Wright
Series: Sole Survivor: Maria Ikamoto [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2059080
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	House, Now Home

Piper blinks against the strip of light laid precisely across her eyes, the first sign that morning had come. Groaning, she turns in the sheets, arms outreached to wrap around her wife’s torso and cram her face into her beloved neck. She meets empty air, however, and groans again. She slept in, then, a not uncommon consequence of staying up late to finish up an article, too engrossed to pay any mind to time.

Maria would redirect her, sometimes, slip her arms around her shoulders and kiss her cheek, beckon her to bed. Piper vaguely remembers refusing last night, lest she leave “the writing zone”, much to exasperation and a tired, but loving _good night, sweetie._ That also means she went to sleep at a responsible time, woke up before her, Piper muses, fingers toying with the bedsheets. Old, but probably one of the most intact left in the universe, left untouched and preserved from the bunks in Vault 111.

Maria woke up early because they have kids to feed and send off to school. Shit.

Piper jumps off out of bed, tugging a pair of sweats over her bare legs. The waist was massive and even then, horribly worn out, but she bunches up a side and secures it tight with a hair tie. She feels her hair messed around her head, and her tank-top is mildly sweaty and bunched in places, but she had a policy: she _always_ says goodbye to Nat and Shaun. She’s done it with Nat every day since dad died, she’d do it now, even if danger was unlikely: you never know if you get to say it again.

Skipping down the stairs, she hears steam and sizzles, the noises of something sloshed around a pan. Mostly importantly, however, she hears the kids, they haven’t left yet. But they’re close, she sees the pan abandoned for a moment in favor of finalizing touches to the two lunchboxes: Grognak for Nat, Cappy for Shaun.

“Not so fast!” Piper runs up behind them, hooking each of them underneath their armpits with each arm, lifting and spinning. Giggles and yells respectively are her reward, but it’s all in good fun, even when she lets them go and Nat almost falls over. “Not without goodbyes!”

“You’d wake up out of a coma if we didn’t say bye, wouldn’t you?” Jesus, sometimes she forgets the mouth on Nat, too blunt for her age and own good.

“Yep, deal with it, kiddo.” She almost reaches out to ruffle her hair but thinks better of it, then she’d insist on brushing it again and they’d be late. “And be good today, you _still_ have work to make-up from staying home last week.”

“Ugh. It’s not my fault Sheng spread his germs everywhere!” Nat huffs, and only accepts a quick pat on the shoulder from Maria as she opens the door herself and leaves. Brat.

Shaun doesn’t go immediately though, smiles timid up at her in a way that’s so reminiscent of his mother it still throws her off. Synth or not that was her son: same steely grey, but bright mono-lidded eyes, alight with joy and crinkled at the corners from smiling. Same cheek bones too, same round bump on the bridge of his nose. Piper smiles back, not that she hadn’t already, not that she had to force it. Just wider.

“Bye mom,” he says, and hugs tight around Maria’s waist, smiling at the forehead kiss he receives. Customary, ordinary.

And Piper’s still smiling, expecting a _bye Piper_ and side-hug before he books it after Nat. But to her surprise, he goes all the way, with arms looped behind her head, a squeeze and head in her neck. “Bye, mom.”

Just as quickly, he’s out of her arms and out the door, leaving her stunned where she’s crouched. Piper stares hard the door, blinks once, twice before she finally stands. Maria looks just as shocked, still standing there, apron over her silly but pretty pre-war dress, hands over her mouth.

“Blue?”

Snapped free of it, Maria steps closer, hands unwinding themselves.

“Did he just…?”

Slowly, the corners of her lips perk up, pushing those defined cheekbones enough to urge a couple tears loose. Piper’s not better off, leaning forward to meet her halfway and tuck into her arms, against a shoulder she lavishes daily, against the neck she worships. 

“Maria. He called me mom.”

“Yeah,” she laughs softly, gently knots a hand into Piper’s sleepy mop and brushes, “he did.”

God, how many nights? How many quiet little moments after they’d first kissed did Piper wonder what would be of her if they ever found Shaun? Who would she be to him? Could she ever be…? 

All answered now though, and as casually and random as possible, on an otherwise unassuming morning before school.

“I’m his mom.”

“You are,” Maria’s laugh is wet, she can feel it when she pulls back enough to kiss Piper sweet, press their foreheads together. “He loves you, Pipes, I’ve told you that.”

God, she’d almost missed it too, having slept in like that. And even though it’s been seconds it hurts to think about, that she might have missed that little blessing from a kid she so badly wanted to call her own, that WAS her own. Her and Maria’s own.

“I mean, I knew but...Oh, Blue.”

Maria shushes her, holds her and rocks a bit. She remembers, it felt like yesterday they were getting friends to pitch in and help build a loft into a particularly high ceiling of their home, to attach and tug in the bunk beds Shaun and Nat shared. She remembered tucking them in and kissing them goodnight the first time, and her and Piper sitting stunned on the couch in the living-kitchen below, unbelieving of how lucky they are.

But it’s now, a rather commonplace, comfortable morning with the wasteland’s sun breaking in between the curtains, with the fans on and an old, mostly not-stained rug beneath their feet. In home plate, their home, customized and lived in corner to corner, slowly having become their own. With a dinner table where guests sometimes sat, a couch with permanent bents and well-patched holes, a stove they’d spent hours repairing and then a whole other scrubbing to hell with abraxo to make it look as spotless as it does.

_Oh shit, the stove-_

Sharing the same thought it seemed, Maria gasps and breaks free, grabbing the handle and flipping. Unfortunately, the omelet that’d been cooking was a faint yellow-white on one side, and entirely black on the other. Oops.

She sighs, accepting defeat, and pulls the pan off the burner. Resisting the urge to laugh, Piper automatically reaches for another one, and then two new radchicken eggs from the fridge. Some Brahmin sausage, too, the kids don’t have to know what they missed out on.

“Dogmeat!”

The mutt runs in at record speed, knowing his name called in this house means too things: adventure, or food. In this case, Maria flops the somewhat-cooled omelet over his dish, and he scarfs it down so unchewed and fast that Piper doubts he even tasted it.

Watching him, bemused, Maria sighs again as her wife slides up behind her and encircles her waist, though in satisfaction this time. They fit together perfectly, in a position they long decided was their favorite and brought with it the calm and safety of familiarity, of love that’s only grown since they’d first done so. “We gotta let that sausage thaw.”

“Mhm.”

“Soooo we could totally just, ya’know, lay in our nice soft bed and cuddle while we wait?”

“I suppose,” despite the irresponsibility of the suggestion, it has no consequences. None they won’t enjoy, anyhow, whether they fall asleep or what else. “Lazy today?”

At first, yes, only driven out of bed by her insistence on sending the kids off every morning. But even with the ecstatic rush of her worries quieted and questions answered, of her silent gratification that she is, after all, Maria’s wife and Shaun’s mom, that she’s where she wants to be and couldn’t be more grateful...The lack of sleep was _definitely_ catching up with her.

“Paper won’t print itself, but we’ve got time. Humor me, Blue.”

Maria chuckles, turning around and kissing her again, savoring it. “Breakfast will be lunch by then, but...You, Miss Wright, are a terrible influence.”

“Only for you, Miss Ikamoto.” It’d been this whole thing, who took whose last name but in the end, they were still themselves, just together. Them, Nat, Shaun...And the slice of heaven in Diamond City they deserved.

As far as Piper was concerned, that’s all that mattered.


End file.
